Education for African Americans - 9.28.2006.3

Continued from part 2...

This is why I agree with this statement by University of Illinois professor Walter Benn Michaels, “When students and faculty activists struggle for cultural diversity, they are in large part battling over what skin color the rich kids have.”

So lower income African American students (in particular the males) are still waging an uphill battle. Even initiatives such as the Harvard financial aid program that eliminates loans for students that have families with incomes under $60,000 have not prompted an increase above 10% for students of low income families (in which African American students are predominant).

What is to be done about this I ask? If you are a Democrat, there are promises of reforms to education; yet the same promises have been made since before I was in high school. Inner city youth are decidedly worse educated now than at any time prior. Estimates ranges around 70% of African American males are dropping out of high school. Initiatives to improve this percentage have been blocked as cited by Mike Bowler, former Baltimore Sun education reporter in 1995 “In Detroit a judge declared all-male academies unconstitutional after the National Organization for Women took the district to court. The federal Department of Education killed an experiment in Miami, saying it amounted to gender discrimination. And Philadelphia, school officials canceled a single-sex program that seemed to be paying off in higher school grades and improved attendance after the American Civil Liberties Union complained.” The ACLU and NOW are both strong supporters of the Democratic Party. Republicans have done slightly more, in my opinion, but nothing that would truly stem the tide.

Continued in part 4...